Rossetti MS. j Final Versto?i] To My Mirtle To a lovely mirtle bound, i Blossoms show'ring all around, O how sick & weary I Underneath my mirtle lie ! Why should I be bound to thee, 5 O my lovely mirtle tree? MS. Book, p. io6, where it immediately precedes ' Nought loves another as itself ('A Little Boy Lost'). The simple and faultless form into which Blake here compresses the sixteen lines of the preceding version has been obscured by editorial changes. As this poem has never been correctly printed, it may be well to reproduce it in the exact form in which it is found in the MS. Book, indicating deleted Hnes by italics : — TO MY MIRTLE.
Why should I be bound to thee *i O my lovely mirtle tree
Love free love cannot be bound To any tree that grows on ground.
To a lovely mirtle bound *S Blossoms showring all around
Like to dung upon the ground Underneath my mirtle bound
O how sick & weary I *9 Underneath my mirtle lie.
It will thus be seen that Blake began by transcribing, as it stood, the first stanza of the earlier version, beginning his second stanza with the couplet which he had rejected in the previous draft and adding — but in transposed order — two accepted couplets of the same stanza. He then struck out 11. *3,
- 4 and *7, *8, prefixing marginal numbers in his usual manner to indicate the
position of the lines retained. Blake's intention is perfectly plain ; yet we find all Blake's editors following DGR in restoring the deleted lines *3, *4, and printing the poem as two four-line stanzas. The original arrangement of the verses must have misled Mr. Rossetti into supposing that two more lines were required, otherwise he would have been the first to perceive how greatly the poem gains in freshness and sweetness by the omission of the rhetorical tag : — Love, free love, cannot be bound To any tree that grows on ground ! All edd. follow DGR's text. EY (Notes to the Poetical Sketches, Songs, &c.) iii. 95, and WBY (Notes), print the lines in the order in which they were written in the MS. Book, but leave them meaningless by the omission of Blake's marginal numbers, and by ignoring deletions. DGR and all edd. give this poem the title used in the earlier version, ' In a Myrtle Shade.'
sick] weak all edd. 4 lie] All edd. end first stanza here. 6 tree]
Alledd.add.*z, *4-
